This invention relates to mowers and more particularly to so-called disc mowers in which knives are mounted at the peripheries of cutter discs which are rotable at relatively high speed so as to cut standing crop by impact as opposed to shearing.
Disc mowers invariably have knife-carrying discs mounted on top of a relatively shallow casing which houses the drive mechanism for the discs. The thus bottom-driven discs have an uninterrupted upper surface over which cut crop can flow to be deposited in a windrow to the rear of the mower which is advantageous. To date the discs have been driven through a gear train contained within the casing which thus has to be filled with lubricating oil. A number of disadvantages flow from this arrangement : the use of a precision gear train is relatively expensive in production and maintenance, maintenance is not made easy by the need to empty the casing of oil before being able to work on the gear train and other components housed in the casing, and the mower is noisy in operation.